I never was much good at sleeping in weird environments. And the overnight train to Bangkok definitely qualifies, at least for me.
Not that it’s bad; quite the opposite. Even here in second class I have my cosy little cubicle, with a perfectly comfy, albeit narrow, bed – with clean, crisp sheets, I might add – shielded from my fellow travellers by a curtain in a fetching green. It’s certainly a step up from last year’s Vietnamese rattle bucket. It’s not the train, it’s me. But it is what it is, and it’s going to continue being it till about seven and change, so I thought I might just as well get on with today’s exciting installment.
Which began when we checked out of the Island Resort where we’ve been lodged for the last few days, after one last trip to our favourite waterhole down on the river, and set off to walk the k and a bit to the main road, to catch our minibus ride to Surat Thani, where we were booked on this rapid sleeper (hah!) to Bangkok.
The journey was supposed to be two hours, but our driver managed to reduce it to not much more than an hour and a half by the cunning technique of driving like a maniac. To be fair, almost all the minibuses we’ve been in have been driven insanely: typically at 60 mph or so, barely five metres from the vehicle in front. But Tiger was in a class of his own. At one point, no exaggeration, we passed a 50 kph speed sign at what must have been something like 80. Mph.
So that was exciting! And it gave us even more time to kill in Surat Thani, a town even the bubbliest blogs struggled to find anything to say about. But it did have a Saturday night market, and as luck would have it, today was the day, so with five hours till our train, we decided to take the orange bus, which apparently took 40 minutes to get from the train station into town.
Well, that was an experience all in itself. The orange bus was right outside the station, and looked like it had been stumbling around since about 1950. The interior was mostly scrappy chrome, with faded seats and an ancient telly over the driver’s head, the screen long since replaced by a scrappy poster wishing us a happy new year.
After waiting at the stand for five minutes, we were still the only passengers, apart from a quiet young woman a couple of rows back, and the driver – more ancient than the bus, by the look of him – showed no signs of impatience to be off. Eventually I got up and asked if this was actually the bus to….at which point he tapped an old wall clock hanging off the dashboard and indicated that we’d be on our way on the hour. In the event, perhaps in a nod to our urgent schedule, he started up about two minutes early. Though in truth it was kind of hard to tell.
To say it was the slowest bus I’ve ever been in doesn’t begin to do it justice.
We staggered out into the traffic with a horrible grinding of gears, and gradually built up to a heady 10 or 11mph, where we stayed for the remainder of the journey. Every possible pedestrian was gently bipped, and we took a succession of improbable detours, all in search of new punters, but there were no takers. I saw women at bus stops, clearly wise to this apparently freelance operation, actively shaking their heads. “Well, we’re certainly getting time to see everything,” said Virle. After about half an hour or so, the driver’s female companion did a whip round of fares (40 baht a head), then we pulled into a petrol station, where she immediately turned the takings into fuel. Brilliant!
Eventually, and I really do mean eventually, we arrived within a mile or so of the market, where we decided to pick up the pace by walking the rest of the way.
After a few minutes negotiating the decidedly shabby streets of Surat Thani, we began to encounter stalls, and before long we were in the market proper, surrounded by hustle, bustle, and wonderful smells from all the stalls, selling a cornucopia of brightly coloured foodstuffs, many of them identifiable. “Sorry, I can’t resist,” I said to Virle, “I’m going to have to hit the fried chicken.” “Oh, go on, get me one too.” It was on skewers, coated in breadcrumbs, it was, it turned out, pork, and it was excellent.
So we wandered happily, watching people munching street food, trying on fake Nike trainers and painting plaster figurines, which seemed to be a thing. Needing a loo, we got directed to a Buddhist temple, where we were told there were toilets we could use – and very good they were too. We got me two new pairs of reading glasses and a t-shirt (“Oh, this? Yes, I got it at a dahling little market stall in Thailand.”) Then we feasted on very good green curry, 90 baht for both of us, before heading down to the riverfront to watch the sun go down, only to find it had gone down already. But it was still lovely, with boats and birds doing their thing in the rosy light.
Then it was time to head back, and since our train left in under a week and a half, we decided to forgo the delights of the orange bus in favour of a cab. Which proved less straightforward and rather more stressful than we might have hoped, but all’s well that ends well, and Grab, after a false start or two, got us back to the station with half an hour to spare.
We retrieved our rucksacks from left luggage, and a nice security man showed us just where to stand to be ready for carriage 2. The train was a bit late, but hey, what’s ten minutes on an overnight journey, though we were a bit surprised to find that carriage 2 appeared to be first class. We’d definitely booked second. But we staggered on, figuring we’d sort it out, and were just trying to work out the cabin numbers when a railway man appeared, just as the train began to roll.
We did our best to explain, and I managed to get the ticket up on my screen, at which point he pulled out and started gabbling into his walkie-talkie. The train screeched to a halt and he bundled us off, then Virle told me at some length how everything I do goes wrong, while we waited for our train to turn up. Which didn’t take long a tall a tall.
And now it’s 4.30, time to stumble down the ladder and along to the loos for a wee before I have another go at this here sleep business. You never know…